Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Better Living through Dreaming

If you've read up at all on sleep studies, you're probably confused about what you're supposed to do. Last year, Pound360 posted on how sleeping in on the weekends (disrupting your regular sleep patterns) can make you feel jet lagged on Monday when you return to normal.But a recent article at Scientific American seems to contradict this.

First, why sleep at all? According to the SciAm piece, a lack of sleep can lead to "a foggy brain, worsened vision, impaired driving, and trouble remembering." Prolonged sleeplessness (years of it) can lead to obesity and heart disease. Unfortunately, "most Americans suffer from chronic deprivation."

What to do when you're falling behind on sleep? Don't try to earn it all back in one "extended snooze marathon." Instead, try "tacking on an extra hour or two of sleep a night" until you're refreshed. Be patient. It can take "months" to get back to normal.

Normal is basically going to sleep when you're tired and waking up without an alarm clock, reports Scientific American.

That's so funny. Oh. So terribly funny. But we at Pound360 are too tired to laugh. We live in a world with schedules and tons of obligations. It sucks. We're prepared to die an early death because of it. Or at lease suffer a life of brain fog, fuzzy vision, impaired driving and poor memory.

Anyway, here's another interesting takeaway from the SciAm piece. "A 2003 study in the journal Sleep found that the more tired we get, the less tired we feel."

About Me

I started pound360 to channel my obsession with vitamins, running and the five senses. Eventually, I got bored focusing on all that stuff, so I came back from a one month hiatus in May of 2007 (one year after launching Pound360) and broadened my mumblings here to include all science.